a blog about movies, books, and getting lost….

Tag Archives: murder

Based on a thriller novel by Jack Vance, who is better known for his science fiction and fantasy tales, Bad Ronald found its way to the screen via the glass teat on the ABC network’s Movie of the Week program. Yes, the major networks once made movies. Hard to believe, I realize, in this day of “reality” programming and the like, but it’s true. Most of the movies produced for ABC–as well as for NBC and CBS–were garbage, fondly remembered now for their camp value and little else.

Every once in awhile, though, something strange and memorable for the right reasons would air–Brian’s Song (1971), Duel (1971), The Point! (1971), The Night Stalker (1972), The Legend of Lizzie Borden (1975), Trilogy of Terror (1975). And this little curiosity… Bad Ronald (1974).

It’s not a “great” movie by any means, though it sure did make an impact on me when I first saw it as a wee lad. I have no idea if I saw it when it originally aired in 1974 (I would’ve been five) or when it was possibly rerun not long after. Whenever it was, I was young and impressionable.

It marked me.

Bad Ronald‘s twisted set-up–a misunderstood teenage boy in the Norman Bates mold kills a neighborhood girl after she taunts him and his domineering mother hides him from the cops within a secret room within the house–gripped me and haunted me for years. I told friends about this movie whenever I could, but I never met anyone who had ever seen it. And I suspect many thought I was making it up.

It had been issued on VHS at some point… but I only caught up with it again when it was shown on cable in the late-1980s. I was disappointed. Its power had faded. Like many of the films that make the biggest impact on you when you’re a child, they fail to live up to the significance you’ve given them when you view them as an adult. You hyped it too much over the years… falling in love with how your skull cinema screened it nightly rather than the less impressive reality.

Nevertheless, after the disappointment of watching it again, I still talked about it to anyone who’d listen. The premise was just too warped to shelve away. And the actors involved–Scott Jacoby, the excellent Kim Hunter, a brief straight turn by future comedic bumbler Dabney Coleman, and a young Lisa Eilbacher–all made it impossible for me to dismiss. It was schlock to be sure.

But it was my schlock.

While the flame of fond memories had dimmed, I looked forward to the day when one of the genre specialist video companies like Anchor Bay or Synapse Films issued a proper DVD of it. In 2009, Warner Brothers released the movie as part of their worthy Archive Collection. Like the majority of the discs in this series, the quality isn’t great… we’re talking burned-on-demand discs here… but it’s hard to complain since a movie like this is probably never going to see a remastered release.

Earlier this week I finally showed Bad Ronald to my partner in crime. It was the first time I’d seen it since the late-1980s. Surprisingly, I liked it much better this time around. Sure, on a technical level the movie is unimaginative and symptomatic of the drab, no fuss camera set-ups and lighting schemes so popular at the time in television movies and sitcoms.

But Bad Ronald gets under my skin. While watching it this week, I was shocked by how vivid many of the scenes, especially the one below with the girl on the bicycle, were to me.

It was like no time had passed….

Not so bad. Just misunderstood.

Mother sees him with different eyes.

Hopefully, his date will view him differently too.

See the talented young man beneath the awkwardness.

But the “date” goes wrong and Ronald is humiliated.

Best to just take a short cut and get back home…

Unfortunately that short cut intersects with her lifeline…

Triggering a chain of events…

changing the both of them forever.

In time he’ll reflect that it should have ended at that moment.

On the bricks…

His head splattered, his life ended.

Less trouble that way.

But at this moment, not knowing what awaits them in the coming seconds…

For fiction lovers, if you aren’t aware or haven’t read George Pelecanos then you are simply missing out on the finest living American crime writer. Since 1992 when A Firing Offense was published, chronicling the increasingly boozy and dire missteps of private investigator Nick Stefanos (Nick also featured center stage in Nick’s Trip, and Down by the River Where the Dead Men Go before coming in and out of the subsequent books) through the 2006 The Night Gardener (about the return of a serial killer who murdered three people in the 1980s) Pelecanos has charted the through-lines of crime, murder, and the possibility for redemption. These are moral tales in their way. Although I would hate to discourage anyone from reading them who loathes the Western genre, in many ways that’s exactly what Pelecanos’ tales of struggle are–urban Westerns. Much like the best shoot ’em ups (think The Outlaw Josey Wales, Rio Bravo, The Wild Bunch) violence is only one facet, a corruptive end result within a far richer thematic canvass. The struggle of characters to maintain diginity, honor, and the essential need for comraderie/family in a world seemingly coming undone are the true preoccupations of his characters and of this consistantly fascinating writer.

For the record, I’ve always been partial to the stand alone Shoedog (the first book I read by Pelecanos back in 1997) and the early Stefanos novels, the “D.C. Quartet” books, and the Derek Strange and Terry Quinn series. Wait! That’s like all of the books.

I’m a fan.

Sunday the Washington Post ran a lengthy and good profile of Pelecanos… hence the reason for this blog post. I guess I should also mention that Pelecanos was also a contributing member of the HBO series The Wire… the best damn (non-fantasy) television show ever. Dont’ agree? Well, I know this cat named Omar Little who may be paying you a little visit then. He’s very persuasive. Very.

I’ve been doing my part in trying to get people to read Pelecanos since I first “discovered” him. In the last few years he’s caught on with the general public and each book has gotten richer, better, and more complex while still delivering the crime fiction goodies. But I know some of you still haven’t taken the plunge. Pelecanos’ new book, The Turnaround comes out in August, so there’s no better time to seek him out.

I don’t even know where to begin with this song. It’s been covered repeatedly over the years–maybe most sensationally and disappointingly by Primal Scream and sex kitten Kate Moss, though the Lydia Lunch/Rowland S. Howard version has its murderous charms–but no one has been able to capture the wild doom and psychedelic potency of the original. As an aside, director Lynne Ramsay (Ratcatcher) used the song in her second film Morvern Callar to great effect.

Without further ado… here’s Lee Hazelwood and Nancy Sinatra singing “Some Velvet Morning”. One of the strangest, most beautifully bizarre pop songs ever. Hell, it may be the best pop song ever.